EYFS Enabling environments

Some of our eagle eyed visitors may have noticed that over the last few weeks we’ve made a couple of changes to the resource categories on the site. We’ve removed the ‘class management’ section and replaced it with a section called ‘Enabling Environments’. This contains 4 subsections –

Classroom displays and accessories, SEN resources, observation and assessment, and physical, social and emotional development (PSED). The first two subsections consist mainly of resources taken from the old classroom management section, however hopefully they will be a bit easier to browse now that they have been divided up in this way. The latter two sections are made up of new resources that we have recently uploaded. 

The PSED subsection consists of resources designed to help children develop their emotional intelligence and form positive relationships. It includes an emotion dice as well as many other resources specifically designed to encourage children to contemplate and discuss certain emotions. Several of these resources were put together using illustrations designed by freelance graphic designer Amardip Bhopari. We gave Amardip the rather challenging task of designing pictures to represent 12 different emotional states and we think she did a really great job! So if you’re looking for ways to liven up circle time or group discussions relating to Personal, Social and Emotional Development then the all new PSED section might be a good starting point.

We’re also really excited about our new ‘Observation & Assessment’ subsection. This consists of a variety of time-saving resources designed to help early years practitioners with the more bureaucratic aspects of the EYFS. It includes templates for creating learning journeys, observation and assessment sheets, and a collection of rather useful labels / stickers with the EYFS statements for each age group. This latter resource can be particularly useful when you are gathering evidence of a child’s development. You can either print them out as labels and stick them to the appropriate page in their learning journey books or if you prefer to maintain electronic records you could use the document to copy and paste the text. Either way the labels are very useful in putting all of the relevant info together in one place.